


Expendable

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: Paranoia (2013)
Genre: F/M, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I guess I'm the first one in this fandom, Whump, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 17:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20429555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: Taking an FBI deal sounded a whole lot better than prison time. Or at least it did at the time. Now Kevin's not so sure.They may have taken down two corrupt tech moguls with one stone, but the only way Adam and his friends avoided prison was turning their planned tech startup, Cerberus, into a cover for their new real jobs; an FBI special operations team that pulls off high-level corporate stings across the country. It didn't seem like such a bad deal. Avoid a ten-by-ten room, spend their days pulling off James Bond-level operations. Of course, it was all too good to be true, and everything had to go wrong at some point...





	Expendable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_another_outcast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_outcast/gifts).

“Hey, man, do you mind being careful with those? That’s my backup pair.” Kevin sighs as the biggest goon snaps his glasses in half and pockets them; he can tell more by the sound than by the blurry images in front of him.

He can hear someone else talking. “That’s all he had on him aside from the wallet. ID says he’s a ‘Luke Arrington’.” He’s glad he ditched his comms when security found him on the bench outside. As long as they think he’s working alone, Adam and Emma are free to break into the mainframe and help Allison plant her spyware virus in peace. _It doesn’t matter what happens to me, the mission is more important. _Taking this company down should expose millions in fraud as well as a profitable side business in human trafficking. _As long as we bring them down, it’s worth this._

Taking an FBI deal sounded a whole lot better than prison time. Or at least it did at the time. Now he’s not so sure. _This is gonna be one of those things where they never find my body._They’ve been lucky so far. But this time, they got cocky, and cocky means sloppy.

Maybe he should consider himself lucky he won’t be there for what is going to be a scathing debrief. Their new handler, Bethany Raines, is absolutely terrifying. He’ll never forget her walking into their new offices with the FBI’s ultimatum.

_“I hope you three don’t think that because you managed to somehow bring down Wyatt and Goddard on a wing and a prayer that that’s how we’ll be letting you continue to operate. From now on, Cerberus answers to me.” _

He thought Ally’s choice of names for their company was cheesy when they started, but she’d insisted that a tech startup that was really the cover for an FBI sting team needed a strong name, the kind of name that those things always had on TV. _Cerberus, the three-headed dog from mythology. Because there were three of us when we started. _Emma Jennings hadn’t been recruited until later.

He doesn’t envy the others their meeting with Raines. He also doesn’t envy himself the quick trip six feet under…or maybe to the harbor…that he’s going to get when these guys realize they’ve been had. He doesn’t let himself wonder if maybe they’ll decide he’s worth more alive, and ship him off with their next load of human cargo before their operation gets shut down.

And then any coherent thought goes out the window with his last lungful of oxygen as a fist drives into his stomach. He doubles over, coughing, dragging in a ragged breath. _Did they ask me a question? I didn’t hear it. _That’s what he gets for getting lost in his own head again. _Not that I’d answer anything they asked me anyway. _

He knows how to take a punch, he’s known since middle school. When the biggest, strongest kids started singling out anyone who wasn’t like them and making them a target. _I was a skinny, short kid who was a nerd on top of that. _A combination that earned him quite a few behind-the-high-school-track-bleachers beatings. He still has a scar on his left cheekbone from Donnie Wilson’s fists.

Still, these guys have a lot more force behind their punches than a twelve year old basketball star. He really hopes they’re not doing a lot of internal damage, or at least if they are that they’ll shoot him and make this quick. He doesn’t want to die slowly and suffering.

It was the first thing he was afraid of when he came to on the pavement after that car slammed into him. Not whether another car was coming, not whether it had been deliberate or not. He’d been terrified that he’d been hurt too badly to recover, but that the doctors would try to save him anyway. _In retrospect, that was pretty dumb. I had a sprained wrist and some nasty bruises. _They hadn’t told him a bruised femur hurts like you broke it, but it heals a whole lot faster too. _Gunshot to the head is a lot more permanent._

His ears are ringing from the pain, there must be a few cracked ribs now, and there are flickers of bright light on the edges of his blurry vision. He’s probably about to pass out.

The door slams open, and he hears voices. _They’re coming to take me away now. _They’re either going to shoot him or sell him, and neither one of those is appealing. There’s some yelling, and then he hears the fleshy sound of fists connecting with human bodies. _That doesn’t make sense._He really wishes he could see.

Someone leans down in front of him, working at the zipties on his wrists, and he flinches away. _What am I struggling for? I can’t possibly get away. I’m too injured and I can’t even see. _He’s just prolonging the inevitable.

“Kev?” Weird, he totally knows that voice. “Hey, Kevin, you okay?” _What’s Adam doing here?_

“Adam?” He didn’t think they were coming back. They shouldn’t have come back. _They shouldn’t have risked themselves like that. _He got caught, he doesn’t deserve to have them bail him out. _If I’m not good enough to save myself, no one else should have to do it for me. _“Is that actually you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, are you crazy? How hard did they hit you, man?”

His hands are free now, and he gestures vaguely to his face before curling in on the pain in his sides. “Dude, I can’t see.”

“You lost _another _pair of glasses?” Emma asks.

“Not my fault! One of those goons took them,” he insists, then winces at the pain flaring along his ribs from raising his voice. “How did you find…”

“We’re a bunch of hackers and computer nerds, who literally had access to the entire building mainframe,” Ally says. “If we couldn’t find you, we should all be fired. God, you look terrible.”

“Thanks.” He groans. _Guess one thing I like about my girlfriend is her honesty._

“I found your glasses,” Emma says wearily. He can’t see them but he’s pretty sure they’re totally trashed. “Sorry, they’re broken. I think when I knocked that guy out he fell on them in his pocket.”

“He broke ‘em first.” Kevin mutters, then gasps and groans as someone, probably Adam judging by the way they’re stooping to get an arm under his shoulders, pulls him upright. “Hey, take it easy.”

“We can take it easy when we don’t have to worry about reinforcements,” Emma says. “Ally, where are those guys now?”

“Stairs and elevator, stairs are at the third floor, elevator’s at four and climbing.”

“Looks like we’re taking the fire escape,” Adam says. _Ouch. That’s gonna suck. I was really hoping we’d be able to take the elevator. Couldn’t one thing go right today? _“Okay, team, let’s go home,” Adam says, taking a step forward. Kevin follows, leaning heavily on his friend’s supporting arm. _I guess one thing did go right. I found out I have people who I can count on to have my back. _It makes five flights of fire-escape stairs an almost-bearable thought.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just the teaser for a full-length series I'm planning on creating, a sort of 'spinoff miniseries' where I create a new case episode each month. I'd love to know how many people are interested in seeing this happen...


End file.
